The subject matter disclosed herein generally relates to refrigeration and/or cooling systems. More particularly, the subject matter disclosed herein relates to valves for refrigeration and/or cooling systems.
Refrigeration and cooling systems typically use numerous valves throughout the systems to regulate flow therethrough. In particular, a Hot Gas Bypass Valve (HGBV) is utilized to allow a portion of a refrigerant flow to bypass the condenser of the refrigeration system. During low load conditions a low amount of refrigerant is bypassed, so there is a need for the HGBV to modulate over a range of small effective flow areas. When modulating refrigerant flow in this low load condition, it is necessary for the HGBV to have a very fine resolution in changing the effective flow area, thus a gain of the valve (the change in flow area for a given change in valve travel) is required to be small. In other operating conditions, however, it is desirable to bypass a larger portion of the refrigerant which requires the valve to modulate over a range of larger effective areas. In this operating range, it is often desirable to generate a large flow area quickly in order to minimize the valve stroke, overall valve size, weight, and slew rate, among other factors. Therefore a large gain is desired for this operational range of the valve.